Blue and white Staffordshire transferwares were initially developed to imitate painted Chinese export porcelains.  In the early 19th century, a particular dark blue version of the genre depicting American subjects and landscapes became popular in the newly independent United States. Later that century, William Cowper Prime was to assert that, "In memorializing both the triumph of war and peace, transferware ranks in historical collections with the vases of Greece...men will say that these show the tastes, these illustrate the home life, of the men and women who were the founders and rulers of the American Republic."  Historical transferwares became highly collectible, resulting in a second wave of imitative wares well into the 20th century.

​

In his new American Scenery body of artwork, showing simultaneously as part of Raid the Icebox exhibit now at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, Rhode Island, and as a solo exhibit at the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, UK, Paul Scott updates the highly selective narrative.  The work is a nuanced representation of the American landscape that considers cultural diversity, political upheaval, ecological peril, and the post-industrial economy, updated narratives that strip away the nationalistic imagery of historical transferware motifs.  In an image-packed presentation for the Connecticut Ceramics Circle that shows diverse aspects of his research from journeys across America to times spent in the ceramic industry's archives, Paul Scott will interweave the historical and contemporary in order to document the development of the Cumbria Blue(s) artworks over the past 30 years.